


Assorted Short Fics and Drabbles (Avengers Movieverse)

by samalander



Category: Marvel (Movies), The Avengers (2012)
Genre: Alternate Universe, Alternate Universe - World War II, Assault, Captain America: The Winter Soldier, Captain America: The Winter Soldier Spoilers, F/M, Hair, Haircuts, Multi, World War II, multiple stories
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2013-02-26
Updated: 2016-07-29
Packaged: 2017-12-03 15:53:47
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 9
Words: 4,373
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/699969
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/samalander/pseuds/samalander
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Everyone else has one, why not me?</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. A Song of Remembering - Thor/Sif, Loki, a haircut aftermath

**Author's Note:**

  * Translation into Русский available: [Тишина](https://archiveofourown.org/works/702896) by [Helga Winter (hwinter)](https://archiveofourown.org/users/hwinter/pseuds/Helga%20Winter)
  * Translation into Русский available: [Сон](https://archiveofourown.org/works/1248535) by [Helga Winter (hwinter)](https://archiveofourown.org/users/hwinter/pseuds/Helga%20Winter)

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> A companion piece to harassinglokiforever's story [A Ballad of Letting Go](http://archiveofourown.org/works/450148).
> 
> Warnings for Sif feeling (and, one could argue, being) assaulted by Loki's actions, and the fact that my Thor canon is rusty at best, so there may be chronological issues.

To see his Sif cry broke Thor's heart.

He had seen her cry only twice before in her life. Once when Heimdall was injured, on the cusp of death, and Sif sat by his bedside, clutching one hand in hers as tears silently stained her cheeks.

The other when they were children, and her tears had fallen in frustration at the insistence of their teachers that she learn to weave and embroider while Thor and Loki learned to fight.

But today she wept. Bitterly, brokenly, and he could do nothing to soothe her.

He had been the first in the room when he heard her cry. He had been the one to find her, hair shorn close to her head and clippings spread like a halo on her pillow.

That was a week ago.

She had been stunned for several minutes, her hands dripping with gold as she looked at him in askance. Thor could say nothing. Finally, after a lifetime of silence, she met his eyes.

"Your brother did this," Sif said.

Thor sighed. "I know."

Sif extracted her revenge in the way of the Lady Sif- at swordpoint. It was only Thor's intervention, and later Frigga's, that caused her to spare Loki's life, and Odin's requirement that he fix his misdeed and make amends.

Loki presented her with a headpiece, magically enchanted, he claimed, to be more golden than the sun, to grow longer and fuller with every life she extinguished. Thor watched, his heart swelling, as Sif smiled, though it was wary, and allowed the headpiece to be fitted.

He watched as Loki made an apology. Though it was made at knifepoint, it was still an apology.

He watched with hope as his brother and his love made a kind of grudging peace, as they agreed, in what was their way, that they would do their best to coexist.

And he watched the next morning, as Sif tore at the now onyx locks, as she screamed and raged and swore Loki's death at her hand.

He watched as she fell onto the bed, exhausted and heartbroken, with the strands of unbreakable, immutable raven hair covering her face like a shroud.

"I am his," she whispered. "He has marked me."

Thor shook his head and gathered her into his arms. "You are yours," he said, pushing her hair back to see her face, "despite my brother's wrongs."

A tear tracked down her cheek, and he kissed it away.

"I will kill him," she whispered.

Thor said nothing. She would not kill him, because Loki would be sent from Asgard as soon as the Lady Sif had exhausted herself in rage; he would be kept at a distance until it was safe for him to return. If it ever was.

Perhaps it was unfair of him to guard his brother in the face of this wrong. Perhaps he would be better off to let Loki face Sif and reap his reward.

His heart broke at the thought of it.

Sif would not soon forgive him, that he knew, but if he allowed her to kill Loki, he would never forgive her.

It wasn't fair, and it wasn't right. But it was the way of the two sides of his heart, and Thor would die for them both.


	2. Sleeping - Clint/Nat/Steve, cuddles

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> For Cybermathwitch, for the prompt "Clint/Nat/Steve (or, alternatively Clint/Nat & Steve would be ok, too.)"

Steve Rogers woke suddenly, his mind forcing him up out of the cold blue fog that was his nightmare, the swirling mist below the train where Bucky fell.

There was a body next to his, warm and soft in places that pinged in his mind as female and he turned his head to find a shock of red hair on the head snuggled against his chest.

"Natasha?" he breathed, and she hummed in affirmative.

"You're having a nightmare," she told him. "Go back to sleep."

"What are you doing here?"

She sighed, her breath warm across his chest. "I can't sleep when you're having nightmares," she told him. "You make too much noise."

"Have you tried sleeping in your own bed?"

She laughed. "Yes. I thought a snuggle might help you."

Steve thought that sounded like the weirdest thing he'd ever heard, but she was warm and smelled good, so he closed his eyes, and slept without dreaming.

* * *

He hated to admit it, but with Natasha gone on a mission, Steve's nightmares were worse than ever. They were a combination of Bucky falling and Tony falling and Steve falling, Peggy's voice and Natasha's voice and all the voices of all his men, screaming in his head.

On the tenth day after Natasha left, with no sign of her returning any time soon, Clint appeared in Steve's doorway while Steve was getting ready for bed.

"I," Clint said, scratching at the trail of hair that disappeared into his pajama pants, "have been ordered to make sure you're sleeping."

Steve raised an eyebrow and leaned over to spit toothpaste into the sink. 

"You bring me warm milk?"

Clint shook his head, and sat down on Steve's bed. "No," he smiled, stretching so his back popped in five or six places. "But Natasha says you like to be the little spoon."

Steve laughed. 

"You're here to cuddle me?"

Clint nodded and turned down the side of the bed Natasha usually took. "Yeah. It's a hobby."

"I'm not sure I'm okay with that," Steve said.

"You want me to be the little spoon?"

"No. I---" Steve sighed. "I'm not sure I can-- Is this a sex thing?"

Clint shrugged. "It can be, if you want, but I was only ordered to provide comfort."

Steve rubbed at his temple. Fucking modern era was confusing. "But I thought you and Natasha were a couple?"

"Oh, Cap. When have Natasha and I ever been as simple as a couple?" Clint laughed.

Steve had to give him that one. He ran water into the sink, rinsing off his toothbrush, and eyed the bed, where Clint was now lounging, bare-chested and a little hot, against Steve's pillows.

 _Okay_ , he thought, and he turned out the light and climbed into bed.

* * *

Steve didn't have nightmares as much anymore. 

When they came they were bad, but they didn't last very long before one or the other of the superspies in his bed woke him, with words or soft touches or something else, and reminded him who he was.

He slept bracketed these days, Clint on his left and Natasha on his right, his arms wrapped around whichever of them smelled better that night, and the other hot and sweet against his back.

They slept clothed, but Steve thought that maybe, one day, he could see his way into kissing Natasha or Clint or both, maybe see his way into whatever they called their relationship this week.

Maybe he could see himself into a good dream this time, and out of the nightmare.


	3. Silence - WWII AU - Clint/Bobbi, Clint/Natasha, Natasha/Bucky

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> For sugarfey: Clint/Natasha, WWII AU or 1930s-40s noir AU.

Natasha vaguely remembers the trains, the boat, the journey. She remembers it as a constant rocking sensation; her seventh year, clutched close to her mama as they moved from place to place, strange languages spit in her face at every stop. She remembers being hungry, always hungry, and being told, when she was handed bread, not to ask what those were. She thinks, now, that they were weevils, sent to eat their grain, and she understands mama's words to Lubya, now, mama saying "They would eat our food, we will eat them instead."

She remembers the stink of Ellis Island, the crowded halls and beds, held close to mama's breast and saying to everyone, over and over, "My Papa is Dead."

She didn't know what Dead was then.

The harsh light of the African sun beats down on the hospital tent, flies swarming around the netting that covers her patients. She sweats through the linen uniform as she moves from bed to bed, taking a pulse here, lending a soothing word there.

She didn't want to be a nurse. Not in a war, and not in Africa, but her people were dying back home, her countrymen of blood and of heart, and she thought it was the least she could do.

The last bed she visits is a new admit, his close-cropped hair growing out, his head wrapped in bandages. She knows this one, Barton, and she can't get over his pluck. His injury is concussive - a misfire of an artillery shell robbed him of most of his hearing and parts of his ears - but he still smiles and laughs and writes her little jokes every day.

He's awake when she gets there, laughter in his eyes, and no blood, today, on his bandages, which she starts to change.

"You're pretty," he scrawls on the back on an envelope - one of the many he gets from a woman named Barbara back home, a woman that Natasha doesn't ask about because he might tell her. But to see that on her trinket - Natasha rolls her eyes and keeps her hands busy.

She wonders who he is, Barton, on the says when he's not a soldier. Wonders why he enlisted, if he has any brothers fighting elsewhere. She knows he wears a star around his neck, has an inkling that he's fighting for the same reason she is, for the people he's never met who are dying instead of him.

She lays the fresh bandages across his singed flesh, checking for necrosis as she goes - he's healing cleanly, it seems, but this is not a place to heal.

He hands her another note. Will you go dancing with me? it asks, and she shakes her head and mouths "No."

He looks like she's kicked him, and she supposes that she might have, sort of, but it's his own fault for asking stupid questions.

She shows him her ring for the four hundredth time, the ring that Bucky gave her when they met in Italy the year before. (And then he'd gone off with the Howling Commandos, and she'd gone to Africa, but they'd meet up again, she knew it, so she kept his ring on her finger and hope in her heart.)

Barton shrugs, and she knows what he's thinking, that things change and the man who gave her that is far away and, well, they do and he is, but that doesn't make her promise any less sincere than Barton's was to Ms. Barbara.

She doesn't notice the Chaplain at the front of the tent when she leans in to press an affectionate kiss to Barton's forehead, and he clutches his heart in response, pretending to faint. It's what they do.

"Miss Romanoff?" the chaplain asks, taking off his hat as he steps into the tent, and Natasha looks up.

"Yes?"

"Do you know James Barnes?"

Natasha's heart falls to her knees. Only one reason - no.

She sits hard on Barton's bed, her hand flying to her mouth as she tries to breathe. Barton sits up, lays a hand on her shoulder, and she doesn't even hear the next words, the news of her fiancee - or whatever he is - falling to his death, because she can't hear anything over the rushing silence in her ears.


	4. But if life were only moments, then you'd never know you had one - Clint/Natasha, love

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> For the be-compromised Fandom Cliche challenge: "Being bad at feelings, Big I Love You moments"

Natasha doesn't rank her partners.

Really, she doesn't.

But if she _did_ , one day, decide it would be fun to think about bests and worsts, she figures Clint would be somewhere in the top half.

See, she likes sex. It's fun, it feels good, and the way Natasha figures, it's just a perk of the job that sometimes gorgeous criminals want to spend hours worshiping her body. She's not much for the clean-cut soldier type, the kind of man Clint is, but she finds him pleasing enough, kind enough, and just adventurous enough to not kick him out when he snuggles in.

So maybe he's top twenty. Top ten if she counts people she didn't have to sleep with for work. But she's number one for him.

She knows that because he tells her constantly, like she needs the assurance, like she'd be worried if her partner was less than over the moon with a fuck or two. The way she figures, as long as everyone had a good time and got their bells rung, she's not much in the way of a worrier.

("Getting your bell rung" is something she picked up from Steve, who really has the best colloquialisms to steal, hands down. Tony might be faster with a retort or an obnoxious nickname, but Steve has these charming turns of phrase that don't feel like he spent hours practicing them in from of a mirror, which she appreciates more.)

Anyway, sex with Clint, which has been a constant in their relationship as long as they've had a relationship, is good, and Natasha doesn't really have any complaints.

It's six years, two months and 16 days into their partnership that Natasha realizes she and Clint are in love. 

Well, she knew she loved him, because she'd figured that out relatively quickly – despite what she tries to pretend outwardly, Natasha has to be in touch with her feelings. If she wasn't, how could she understand and manipulate anyone else's? – but she's never considered being _in love_ with him, which is somehow different because apparently her deficient childhood is calling and she needs to go through puberty again.

He's not doing anything special when she figures it out. In fact it's the exact opposite of special – she's still in bed, in the apartment they keep outside of Stark Tower because fuck you, Tony, that's why, and he's pulling socks on, his hair still damp from the shower.

She notices a million tiny things in that moment – the way he's getting older, the way he favors his right shoulder, the way he's getting a little soft around his hips because he's closer now to forty than thirty, and that's what bodies do. And something moves in her stomach, a kind of tightening that she doesn't rightly understand.

"Hey," Natasha says, and Clint turns to look at her. "I love you."

Clint smiles. "I love you, too."

It's not what she means, though, what he's saying, because what she means is she _loves_ him, but there's no real way she can see to say that, unless in involves using those words, which feel downright silly to her.

So instead she gets up and makes coffee. She figures that's close enough.


	5. Concerning Strangeness - Clint/Natasha, friendship and conversation

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> "You met me at a strange time in my life."
> 
> (A deleted scene of sorts from "[The Only Soldier Now is Me](http://archiveofourown.org/works/434090)", but I don't imagine you'd have to read that to understand this.)

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> For SugarFey, who prompted "Clint/Natasha, “you met me at a strange time in my life.”"
> 
> Contains discussion of things done in the Red Room, and the ickyness tereof.

The first time Clint says it, Natasha laughs at him, because when has either of them lived a life that wouldn't be counted as strange? A Soviet weapon and a circus freak. Not the most white-picket-fence of couples.

But when he says it again a few weeks later - "You met me at a very strange time in my life" - she is raw from deprogramming with Hill and in need of answers, which Clint is usually good for, even if they're little answers, the kind that don't count. So she asks, facade dropped and emotions raw, what he means by that.

He stares at her for a long moment before he answers. 

"It's not every day I recruit my target."

She nods, waiting for his question (it's his turn - question for question, answer for answer, that's what they do) but perhaps he's too distracted or too _Clint_ or something, and he just stares at his hands.

"Are you in trouble?" she asks. the part of her brain that is still whole and human knows that she should feel guilty if he is, but the larger part, the part of her that is a weapon, just doesn't. That part thinks that Fury would be a fool to punish Clint for bringing in an asset - a _potential_ asset - like her.

Clint shrugs and shakes his head. "No," he says, after a long moment. "Not trouble." She wants to ask more, like why he's still here and not on an assignment if he's not being punished, but he seems to have remembered their game, and he asks her, innocent and guileless, what the Red Room would have done with an agent who disobeyed orders and brought in her kill.

She tells him. It's a long answer, because it involves Petrovitch's tiered system of punishment and the physical and mental components of each individual trial, but in the end the answer boils down to "many, many long and painful things," and she's pretty sure Clint regrets asking.

She wants to reassure him somehow, so she tells him that under-10s would rarely get psychotropic trainings, and if she was younger she'd be more likely to pull an endurance hike in the mountains or the snow. That only seems to make it worse, and she knows that SHIELD considers her training to be child abuse, that it seems to cut him deeply every time he remembers what she's been through. But that's simply absurd to her - she was never a child, not in the way they mean. So she stops talking and bites her tongue until she tastes copper.

The silence settles between them like a blanket of snow, little flakes of quiet awkwardness clumping on her eyelashes, and she becomes aware of Clint breathing. It's deliberate and slow when he inhales, like someone who is trying to center and focus. She decides to help him, because she owes him for all the times he's shown up to help her.

"Why is this a strange time in your life?" she asks again. She doesn't intend for it to be cruel, but she would forgive him if he felt that she was.

He smiles faintly, the skin around his eyes crinkling as though he smiles a lot, as if he were kind.

"Because you came into it," he tells her.

She nods. Fair enough. She'll be the cause of his strangeness, but only because he's the cause of hers.


	6. The boys are concerned - Sif&Natasha friendship

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> For a tumblr prompt:
> 
> "Sif and Natasha become friends. The boys are concerned." (thesifsterhood)

"What are they doing?" Tony whispers, peering around a corner behind Steve.

Steve bats Tony's hand back - they need subtlety if they're going to spy on Sif and Natasha and live, and Tony is kinda the exact opposite of subtlety.

"I think they’re baking," Steve whispers, because to the extent that they're doing anything, they're baking.The kitchen is a wreck - flour and sugar and salt all over every surface, including the women - and every so often one of the women will laugh, or shriek, or something will fall. It isn't exactly the state of domestic bliss that Steve imagined when he was little; it isn't getting married to a woman who bakes cookies for him and their kids. It's better.

Well, sometimes it's better. Right now it's terrifying, and all the men in the tower have found appropriate places to hide for the time being.

(And Dr. Foster is in there with them, too, but she seems to have gone quiet. Last time Steve saw her, she was sitting on the counter, drinking straight bourbon from the bottle and reading Alton Brown's cookbook. Maria and Darcy and Pepper went out hours ago, claiming they had a mighty need for more chocolate chips, and Steve is starting to wonder if he should send out a search party, or start preparing to welcome the new Rulers of Earth back to the tower.)

Tony keeps pacing, though, in the common room, muttering things about deadly cookies and poisoned pies. Steve can’t help but laugh at him. Sif and Natasha are objectively terrifying, no doubt. But they're not the types to really try to kill someone with baked goods. If Sif and Natasha wanted you dead, they'd tell you with a knife, not a knish. How Tony, who sees so many things so clearly, has missed that basic part of the two women he calls friends, Steve will never understand.


	7. "And scream, if they want you, well they're gonna have to fight me" (Clint/Natasha, Mature)

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> For the prompt; "And scream, if they want you, well they're gonna have to fight me".

Natasha thinks of herself of as a surgeon, as the kind of person who takes people apart piece by piece by piece.

(Though maybe a real surgeon would put them back together, that isn't Natasha's style. She'll take them apart, and they can put themselves back together. Or not.)

But Clint. Clint is someone she can't take apart.

She's tried. For nearly a year, after they first met, Natasha probed and poked at all of his insecurities, felt out all of his broken places so she could twist him, so that she could break him.

And when she was ready, when she held all the keys to his heart, all the weapons that would crumble his walls, she balked. She looked at him, at Clint Barton, the man who was nothing more than achingly human, and she couldn't bring herself to break him.

She appointed herself as his protector that day.

He doesn't know it, or if he does he never says a word. He just smiles and laughs and guards her six like she guards his.

Natasha has absolutely no idea what it is about Clint that inspires her to loyalty. Nor does she understand what it is about her that makes him think she could be saved, but he believed it. But it's there, that bond between them, and it appears to be unbreakable.

(Or if it's breakable, it's stronger than armies and gods and aliens, stronger than distance and time and SHIELD. If their bond can be broken, she doesn't ever want to meet the force that can sever it.)

It's why she goes after him on the hellicarrier, why she has to bring him back. She would stand in front of him if the devil led all the armies of Heaven and Earth after his soul, and she will stand in front of him when he is the threat.

Natasha doesn't fear death, neither hers nor Clint's. Death is a friend, a coworker, a truth. What Natasha fears is loss. If she loses Clint, if someone takes him away from her and she can never get him back, if someone or something finally finds a way to keep them apart, Natasha doesn't know what she'll do.

And part of her is disgusted by that, by the weakness and dependency. But part of her loves it, and that is the part that will always fight for him, will always find him.

Because he belongs to her, whether he knows it or not. And she will always find him.


	8. After the Fight - Sharon Carter Gen (Winter Soldier Spoilers)

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> After the fight, Sharon goes to retrieve the Councilwoman.

T+6 hours after the Insight launch, Sharon Carter finally makes it to the bunker where Romanoff stashed the Councilwoman. To be fair, it’s not quite a bunker, more a little house with a glass door that fits right into the suburban Maryland neighborhood.

"Hello?" she calls, pushing open the door, her hand resting on her gun. "Councilwoman?"

"In here," the stiff voice replies, and Sharon follows it to the living room, where a muted TV is playing and replaying the footage of the hellicarriers careening into each other and crashing into the Potomac.

"Insight is a no go," Sharon says, staring at her reflection on the TV. She looks tired, she thinks, the white bandage on her forehead soft against the horror of the day.

"Hello to you too," the Councilwoman says, patting the couch next to her. "Agent Thirteen, is it?"

"Yeah," Sharon nods, taking the offered seat. "Things— things weren’t great. You’re the only Counselor we have left."

"Oh," she says softly, touching her lips in a very British, upper-crust kind of shock. "And— and Pierce?"

"Hydra," Sharon shakes her head, trying not to let it rock her again, not to dwell on the number of friend she’s lost today. Some are Hydra, sure, and some are corpses. All are equally lost.

"Oh," the Councilwoman says, a tear brimming in her eye.

"I don’t know what’s going to happen," Sharon says, her voice sounding young and scared. "I don’t know what happens next without SHIELD."

"Oh— oh, Sharon," the Councilwoman wraps a thin arm around Sharon’s shoulders. "I’m— I know this is tough. For both of us. But— really? It’s a time to build, not a time to break down."

She should have known, Sharon thinks, that this is the kind of support she would get here. Still, she wipes her nose with the back of her hand and nods miserably.

The Councilwoman smiles and leans in, pressing a kiss to her forehead. “And I’ll be here, too. We’ll rebuild together.”

"Yeah," Sharon agrees, letting out a shaking breath. "Thanks, mom."


	9. Carve Your Name Into My Heart (If I Thought it Would Help)

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> for Clintasha Week on tumblr. Prompt was emotions.

The first time Clint hears Natasha laugh is after she's been shot. They're fighting back-to-back, her guns recoiling in a steady heartbeat rhythm.

He hears her pause, and the rhythm falters. He knows she's hurt; maybe she's dead. But the moment passes and her guns start up again, this time uneven and strange. Less a heartbeat, more a gasping breath.

She laughs.

"This is a shitshow," she calls over her shoulder, her voice light with mirth. "You wanna die here?"

"Don't wanna die anywhere," he says, aiming an arrow and landing it-- _thwap_ \-- into a tire of a Jeep, which swerves and crashes into a building.

"Oops," he says, and she rewards him with another laugh.

And it is funny. They're pinned down, they're probably getting out of this in body bags, they have nothing to hope for. It's the damn funniest thing he's ever heard.

He has to drop behind cover, he's laughing so hard. He can barely aim through his giggles. "This is insane," he says, when she drops down next to him to reload. "We have to get out of here."

She nods, snapping another clip into her glock, and he notices the blood-- and it looks like it's probably hers, which is novel-- spattering the chest of her uniform.

"You hit?" he asks, and she shrugs in response, turning her arm so he can see the path the bullet took along her skin, how it carved out a neat little trail over the sleek muscles of her bicep.

"If we live," she says, "I'll live."

"You're funny," he says, thumbing up another arrow.

Natasha smiles at him, poison and sugar jolting his heart like he's been shot himself. "Flirt with me later, stud," she says, winking lasciviously. “Right now we got some living to do."

Clint laughs again, but before he can do much more than that, she’s back in the fray, the double shot from her guns echoing the frantic pace of his heart.

**Works inspired by this one:**

  * [The Good Fight](https://archiveofourown.org/works/1566443) by [Jain](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Jain/pseuds/Jain)




End file.
